Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

An endangered mouse gets help from a boardwalk

"Perdido" may mean "lost" in Spanish, but the federally endangered Perdido Beach Mouse is simply hidden from view, and thanks to an elevated boardwalk over its habitat, protected from crushing human feet. Alabama Department of Transportation maintenance workers constructed the 300-foot boardwalk in less than two weeks, to mitigate for potential impacts to the mouse from a new bridge over Perdido Bay Inlet in Baldwin County. The project, which begins at the cordoned-off Perdido Key parking lot, keeps visitors to Orange Beach from making their own way across the sand through the fragile dunes where the Perdido beach mice live and feed on the seeds of sea oats and beach grass. Indeed, very few beachgoers have taken unwanted paths through the dunes since the boardwalk was constructed.